Lamination of two or more layers of material is an extremely important process in the production of a myriad of goods. Such lamination typically involves the bonding of adjacent surfaces of two layers of different textile or wood products to each other with heat-sensitive adhesive. The two layers typically are fed into a lamination machine where both heat and physical pressure are applied to consequently activate the adhesive and retain the layers together as a laminated product. Non-limiting examples of such laminated products include garments with backings, wadding, or decorative panels, carpets and draperies with backings and linings, furniture upholstery and bedding covers, automotive products, aerospace parts, footwear, woodworking and wood lamination products, and scores of other domestic arid industrial commodities.
While lamination machines are known, these machines provide heat and physical lamination pressure, but many times are ineffective in cooling the joined layers of material after melting of an adhesion constituent is completed and a laminated product is formed. In particular, a cooler component of the prior art may include only a single coolant circulation conduit disposed in a non-rigid housing to result in inefficient contact coupled with inefficient cooling of a laminated product. As a result, hot laminated products with correspondingly produced hot laminates emerge from the lamination process to require significant time and space commitments while cooling and adhesive setting occurs. It is therefore apparent that a need is present for a lamination and coating process wherein laminated products are delivered more rapidly after lamination in a usable or storable state. Accordingly, a primary object of the present invention is to provide a lamination machine that provides effective and relatively rapid cooling of laminated products immediately after a lamination coating procedure is completed.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a lamination machine whose cooling zone is served by a plurality of cooler components having chambers in communication with a cooling fluid.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a lamination machine whose chambered cooler components are substantially rigid to thereby reject bowed movement away from the central cooling zone.
These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent throughout the description thereof which now follows.